Change is coming to college athletics

By The Daily News

Published: Monday, August 18, 2014 at 01:06 PM.

These are confusing times. The world is faced with big problems. As a result, it also has some big opportunities to improve things. This is true relative to just about any topic in the news today. So why should college sports be any different?

Certainly, what’s going on in the Middle East, Washington, D.C., the suburbs of St. Louis, or most major cities for that matter, is infinitely more important than athletic contests.

Nevertheless, competitive sports say something about who we are. In much of the Southeast, many could reasonably argue sports play too large a role in who we are. But there is little denying their importance in our everyday lives, particularly collegiate sports.

Like everything else in this world, collegiate athletics are experiencing rapid and drastic changes. And the most significant changes are in football.

Most people will focus on the fact that this year, for the first time, there will be a college football playoff. It arrived slowly, after decades of fans calling for a playoff and 16 years of the BCS experiment, including eight with the BCS title game.

But the bigger change is coming much quicker. There is a serious question of whether the NCAA will survive, at least as the governing body of college football. Athletes at Northwestern are pushing to unionize. The so-called “Power 5” conferences, including the Southeastern Conference, are poised to form a new alliance after last week’s vote to allow them to make their own rules, chipping away, like a hatchling through its shell, at the old way college athletics were run. And one day after that vote, in a case brought by a former UCLA basketball star, a federal judge issued a landmark ruling against the NCAA, striking down regulations that prohibit college athletes from receiving payment beyond the standard scholarship.

The game being played will look the same, at least for this season, on the field. The playoff means there will even be a few more high-stakes games this year. But that change took decades. What’s coming after this season is coming with a sweeping quickness, and how it shakes out in the long run is anyone’s guess.

These are confusing times. The world is faced with big problems. As a result, it also has some big opportunities to improve things. This is true relative to just about any topic in the news today. So why should college sports be any different?

Certainly, what’s going on in the Middle East, Washington, D.C., the suburbs of St. Louis, or most major cities for that matter, is infinitely more important than athletic contests.

Nevertheless, competitive sports say something about who we are. In much of the Southeast, many could reasonably argue sports play too large a role in who we are. But there is little denying their importance in our everyday lives, particularly collegiate sports.

Like everything else in this world, collegiate athletics are experiencing rapid and drastic changes. And the most significant changes are in football.

Most people will focus on the fact that this year, for the first time, there will be a college football playoff. It arrived slowly, after decades of fans calling for a playoff and 16 years of the BCS experiment, including eight with the BCS title game.

But the bigger change is coming much quicker. There is a serious question of whether the NCAA will survive, at least as the governing body of college football. Athletes at Northwestern are pushing to unionize. The so-called “Power 5” conferences, including the Southeastern Conference, are poised to form a new alliance after last week’s vote to allow them to make their own rules, chipping away, like a hatchling through its shell, at the old way college athletics were run. And one day after that vote, in a case brought by a former UCLA basketball star, a federal judge issued a landmark ruling against the NCAA, striking down regulations that prohibit college athletes from receiving payment beyond the standard scholarship.

The game being played will look the same, at least for this season, on the field. The playoff means there will even be a few more high-stakes games this year. But that change took decades. What’s coming after this season is coming with a sweeping quickness, and how it shakes out in the long run is anyone’s guess.

Make no mistake. Change is coming — big change — to college athletics. There’s no stopping it.

But college sports are at a crossroads. The half-truth of pretended amateurism may soon give way to a money-fueled battle of haves and have-nots. Still, long ago, when there weren’t billions of television and endorsement dollars to be gained, a free education may have been fair compensation. No wonder the players want their cut. And no doubt we’ll look back on the old days of college athletics and yearn with nostalgia for a simpler time.

This editorial first appeared in the Tuscaloosa News, a Halifax Media Group newspaper in Alabama.